


A Study in Improvisation

by CrashCart9



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009), Sherlock Holmes (2009) RPF
Genre: Acting, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Sex, real person fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrashCart9/pseuds/CrashCart9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They'd improvised through this scene, these emotions once before, but it hadn't gotten quite this maudlin.  Almost, he amended, but not quite, and he wanted to see how far Robert would take it."  Bonus, a fair dose of Holmes/Watson proper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Improvisation

**Author's Note:**

> Date: 23 January 2010  
> Words: 3600. And three.  
> A/N: This practice of running lines and just going to town within/after a scene closes is one that I've actually done before in theatre classes, both legitimately and. . . more to the tune of the direction in which RDJude took it (put it this way: I cannot read Romeo and Juliet without wanting to ship Juliet/Nurse now). With Robert's recorded interest in improvisation over and above scripts, this was hardly a leap, I think ;)

"Hey, Jude." Despite the singsong tone, the voice on the other end of the line sounded bored. Richie was working out some technical bullshit and wouldn't release them from call until they got this last scene in the can even though it was pushing 1am, so Jude couldn't fault him. A man of action, Robert was, always talking and joking and calling him "Judsie" and clapping his hand on people's backs and necks and shoulders and waists though maybe that last one was just for his Watson and that was just fine. Sitting in his trailer, forbidden from going out, getting lost, or doing anything to mess up his costume more than a five minute touchup couldn't fix (because _nobody_ wanted to stay any later and Jude was certain the pair of them only had leeway to either get their makeup redone _or_ need more than one take on the shot without there being real threat of a genuine hanging on set), it was easy to imagine the man getting itchy.

"Whatcha up to?" and this sounded more like one of those passing caresses around the waist that Robert was prone to, daring Jude to raise the stakes.

"Absolutely nothing," Jude replied, and it was the truth. He was exhausted, but that was normal with their shooting schedule and he knew that if he closed his eyes, it would be hell to awaken to Richie screaming at him for not being magically on set the instant they were ready. He'd stretched out and dared to pop open the all-oppressive collar, but besides flipping through the script for their final scene of the night, he'd yet to occupy himself with anything more purposeful than the simple luxury of being able to lie back.

There was a smirk in Robert's voice when he said, "Wanna run lines?" that Jude knew meant this was going to turn into one of his ridiculous improv sessions, but he had nothing better to do than find out what would come out of Robert's mouth this time. They'd fooled around with the script before, knowing that both of them would stick more or less to the words on the page when time came to shoot, but using the variations on a theme to expand upon the relationship between Holmes and Watson. It usually dissolved into an artfully crude bout of Victorian flirting, but _some_ legitimate acting tended to come out of it.

"I'm game," Jude said, and he flipped back open to the page they would run as soon as Guy excised whatever snafu was up his arse at the moment, rolling onto one side and laying the script on the bed next to him to avoid having to sit up.

When Robert started with, "Okay, so trippy, trippy, trippy, then Rachel," and pitched his voice up for "Good morning. Now, you need to work," Jude shook his head. He must have been more tired than he thought, because he could have sworn that they were on a different . . . yeah. No, this was wrong, and he opened his mouth to say so but Robert cut him off. "Your line, Watson."

Mentally shrugging, he leafed through his script to the relevant scene and frowned down at the pages. When had Robert gotten a hold of his copy to amend Jude's own delivery notes in the margins with "Sincerely," after his next line? "Familiar artwork," he delivered anyway, making sure to put as much sycophantic saccharine into "You look gorgeous" as possible, much to Robert's laughter.

"Somehow, I knew you wouldn't leave," Holmes said back; it was slightly quieter and Jude could imagine Robert turning slightly away from the phone to say it to an invisible Rachel standing on the opposite side of the room as he—well, as he would be.

This time it was Jude's turn to take the female part—"Oh, but you do it so well," Robert had said once, and Jude had blushed and prayed he wouldn't start calling him Minx, regretting he'd ever mentioned the film. He didn't pitch his voice up, but did jump into an American accent, smiling at Robert's small noise of amusement. "You made the front page," Irene said, nonplussed, sounding somehow still right in Jude's lower register.

"Only in name and no picture," Holmes countered. "No," Robert said. "Only in name and no picture," he tried again, hitting the first syllable of 'only' differently where it had come out too American the first time around.

"That one's better," Jude nodded, rolling over on the mattress and switching ears on his phone. "You'll be needing to work outside the law now, and that's my area of expertise," Irene offered.

Holmes thanked her insincerely. "I feel safer already." His voice warmed as he changed subjects. "You seem to be making a rapid recovery," he said to Watson, his satisfaction with this turn of events evident.

"Yes." Jude closed his eyes, imagined leaning on the cane to stand up with his uninjured arm, sitting close to Holmes on the small bed. "Took the shrapnel out myself. Mary said I had a lousy doctor," Watson jibed affectionately.

The pause that followed felt at least twice as long as the direction in the script must have intended, Jude was sure, because by the end of it he was desperate for Robert—for Holmes—to say anything. Do anything. Just not leave him like this, imagining sitting inches from his best friend, legs pressed against each other and looking into his eyes and wanting to – "Well, I'm. . . just so very glad you're . . . er, with us," Holmes interrupted his thoughts, but before Jude could take a deep breath to regroup, he continued.

"Believe me when I say that though I am certainly capable of puzzling this matter out on my own--" Watson scoffed at his friend's typical, though usually justified, arrogance. "--it would not have gone as smoothly, nor, it is probable, would I have escaped without serious bodily injury," and here he paused, leaving Jude to picture Holmes shifting his body to face Watson's, tracing a finger across the sling he would be wearing before meeting his eyes with a deep gaze; one that truly belied the fear he had felt when Watson had screamed his name in warning just before the series of explosions Holmes' entire ken would have sworn to be fatal. "Without you," Holmes finished in a whisper.

Jude's hand rested on his own thigh where the detective in his mind had placed his after tracing his arm, practiced theatrical detachment allowing it to feel heavy and foreign and Robert's as he suppressed a shudder at the huskiness in his Holmes' voice. They knew each other and their respective versions of the pair they portrayed well enough that Jude was sure his co-star was imagining the same as Watson reached a hand up to cup Holmes' cheek. Always the healer (save, perhaps, when he was cutting off the flow of blood to people's brains, but still), Watson said quietly, reassuringly, "I'm alive, Holmes. I'm here."

There was another long pause, but this time Jude attempted to defuse the tension. "Thank god, or you'd probably be dying in a pool of your own vomit by now. What the hell were you trying to do to yourself, Holmes?"

Robert exhaled harshly and Jude winced. He'd probably heard that before. Watson continued anyway, "Then who would I come back to? I mean, Mary, of course," he added, flustered, "but _Holmes_." Breaking his gaze, he busied himself brandishing the little notebook he'd been writing in when his partner came to. "And anyway, I've only managed to decipher about half of your scribblings. It's obvious you're mapping out one of the rituals, but—God, is that your blood?"

Watson grappled for the detective's injured hand and examined it, eyes tracing up his form to lock once more with Holmes' own, and it was only at that pause that Jude realized he hadn't heard anything from the other side of the line in quite a while. It was finally a quiet, velvety murmur that broke the silence: "Are you ever going to shut up and kiss me, John?"

Watson did, and Robert and Jude both imagined it; their counterparts' lips clashed in a way theirs never had despite long weeks of dancing around each other. "Funny," Watson said breathlessly when the two broke for air (Jude refused to admit that at least part of the breathlessness was not acting), lying crossways on the small mattress where the doctor's fervor had pushed them. "When I was feverish, dreaming of coming back--of finishing this with you--I always expected it would be _your_ enthusiasm at seeing me again that resulted in pushing me back against whatever semi-hard surface was closest."

Robert's laugh rang loudly from the speakers of Jude's phone. "Semi-hard?" he asked, incredulously, before switching back into Holmes. "My dear man, there is a woman in the room," he said in mock chastisement.

"God, Irene," Watson gasped, sitting back up and casting his glance about the room for the seductive criminal.

Holmes' hand on his uninjured arm pulled him back down to the bed. "Let her watch," he said, offhandedly. "You know Rachel would." Robert's accent had slipped, but he didn't seem to care as he jumped back into the detective with "I really thought I'd lost you, you know."

Jude smiled. They'd improvised through this scene, these emotions once before, but it hadn't gotten quite this maudlin. Almost, he amended, but not quite, and he wanted to see how far Robert would take it. "I'd recognize the sound of a grenade pin anywhere—the war, you know this," Watson replied, pausing to kiss Holmes once more. "Do you realize what the only thing that went through my mind upon hearing that sound was? Not Mary, not myself, but praying to _God_ you were far enough back that you wouldn't be hit as well." He broke off with a heavy inhalation. "I could say something stupid like 'London needs you', but you're the one person on this earth I shouldn't be lying to. _I_ need you, Holmes."

Whether Holmes or Robert was responsible for the breathy noise on the other end of the line, Jude wasn't sure, but the soft "Damn you, man. To hear you say that," of Holmes before he resumed passionately kissing his doctor confirmed to Jude it was the latter.

There was a pause, breathing heavy on both sides of the line, and then: "Fuck me," Holmes entreated. But it was Robert because it was wrong; the accent was there but it was off, and Jude couldn't help but laugh. "What?" he said, affronted, all semblance of British gone now. "That's not usually the response I go for when I say that, Judsie."

Jude affected an inarticulate grumble at the name, unsure how he felt about the laughter not doing much to defuse the tightness in his throat as well as that in his pants effected by imagining Robert's lips forming those words when they were inches away on the prop bed. "Your accent," he took pity on his costar, "it was horrid. God, Robert, haven't you heard me say that about a thousand times whenever I arse something up?"

"Never like that," he purred overdramatically, and they both laughed. "Tell you what, though," Robert began; his voice was only slightly less sure as Downey than it had been as Holmes, but noticeable to Jude all the same, "Why don't you tutor me. Andrew's gone home, and as good a coach he was for Chaplin, there are certain words I imagine Holmes needing that I'd much rather learn from you."

"Like 'fuck me'?" Jude asked, and he pitched his voice like Holmes would have meant it, deep and aroused and sincere, and he could hear Robert's sharp intake of breath.

"Yeah," he said before pitching his voice back into Holmes' range, putting just a hint of Downey on the Law accent he'd had modeled over the phone. "Fuck me," he repeated, and it was Holmes but it was not—it probably had something to do with the emboldening physical distance between them, but they had never gone this far before, usually digressing into silly laughter and an implied 'fade to black', and that difference kept it niggling at the back of Jude's mind—this is Robert. And something else in his tone indicated that he's not going to stop.

The thought sent a shock down Watson's braces and the pinstripes of his trousers and Jude had to resist the urge to touch himself as the heat pooled around his groin, making him now undeniably hard. He figured for one last grasp at maintaining some semblance of normality between them, and ventured "But you don't really think Holmes would need to say that. The movie's going to be what, PG or PG-13?"

"Oh, come on, Judsie," he was back to American, but the tingling didn't leave Jude's body; in fact, almost the opposite. "Method. Maybe it'd never make it as far as the dailies, but you can't tell me it's out of character to," and back to Holmes, "express such a sentiment to my Boswell."

The genuine affection in Robert's words broke the last of Jude's resistance and he closed his eyes, phone still pressed to one ear but rolling onto his back, freeing his other arm to press his palm against himself through his trousers. Damned if he's going to control this entire thing, Jude thought, and upped the stakes again. "I want you to bugger me. Say it."

"I want you to bugger me, Watson," Jude heard his accent mimicked, as well as what he swore from the two of them hanging out too often even during costume changes was—fuck it all—the clasp on Holmes' pants being undone.

Jude's braces and trousers were considerably more difficult to wiggle down, and he harbored no delusions that Robert couldn't hear exactly what he was doing. He put actions to the score of the hitched breathing in his ear, imagining the man palming his cock as he listened to Jude's little moan of satisfaction when he finally freed himself from the painful constriction of the costume against his hardness.

He took a deep breath. "I want to take you into my mouth until you're begging to be allowed to enter me," Jude said, stroking himself to the cadence of the breaths he imagined he could feel, humid and hot against his ear. Robert let out a low, rumbling groan, and when he didn't speak for a moment, Jude prompted, "Holmes."

Always the artist, Robert twisted his words and returned them such that Jude shuddered. "I'm going to put your cock in my mouth until you're dripping and shaking and begging to be allowed to enter me." He'd sharpened the first syllable of 'begging' too much, however, and Jude repeated it. He was breathless and smearing pre-come over the head of his cock as Holmes' voice did the same, perfectly accented but tremulous. He wished he could put his mobile on speaker to allow the small grunts on the other end of the line to fill his trailer, but that was even stupider than doing this with a coworker no matter how much they'd been flirting over the last month, so he merely scraped his thumbnail along the vein down the underside of his shaft, ecstatic as he heard Robert's voice ask, "What's next?"

Jude closed his eyes. "Tell me you're fucking yourself for me—for Watson," he amended. "At the same time you're sucking him off, you're getting yourself ready."

"They're a poor substitute for your flesh, Watson," the accented voice moaned, and Jude imagined him inching Holmes' pants lower to reach a hand to circle his asshole, debauched but able to jump back into character just like that. Jude wasn't sure which was hotter.

He rolled back onto his side, pinning the phone between his ear and the bed. They'd kill him if he came on Watson's costume, though there was something dirty about letting it happen and sponging it off and blaming it on something else because he knew Robert would know, and Jude would love to see the man's eyes when he realized it was his fault. He'd spent enough time watching his co-star to be able to anticipate, even though he'd never seen Downey in quite the situation they found themselves now—the widening of his eyes, the slight dilation of his pupils, his tongue darting out to touch the center of his top lip—to touch the center of the head of Jude's cock, he found his mind jumping. His palm slick across the tip felt like the flat of a tongue and he arched and moaned, knocking the script off the bed and not caring. If he could interpret the change in timbre of Robert's moans the way one could his own, it was time to finish this.

"Holmes," Jude gasped, bringing Robert back into their game. "I'm going to take you now. I'm going to fuck you into the mattress," he growled, pumping his shaft faster

"God, yes," his co-star said. "Fucking take me, Watson."

His grip on the accent was weakening as he got closer, Jude could tell. "Fucking take me," he repeated, enunciated to the best of his abilities through his stuttered breaths. "Say it all. I want to hear it in your voice." A twist of his wrist, elbow knocking the clasp of one of his braces loose, and Jude was almost there.

"Fuck me into the mattress," and the accent was crisper but the voice was almost strangled. "Jesus, Watson, fucking take me." There was a choked cry followed by a harsh exhalation and Robert was gone, and when the erratic breaths over the phone were punctuated with a moaned "God, Jude!" so was he. Cupping his hand over his cock—shit, not the shirt; it'd never come out of there and Alison would laugh her arse off and then kill him—he imagined that the wetness spilling on his fingers was Robert's and groaned again into the phone as his cock twitched and then stilled and he finally remembered to breathe.

Smearing his hand across the sheets, Jude rolled onto his back again contentedly. "Robert," he sighed, but there was a muffled stillness on the other end of the line. After a moment, there was a noise in the phone like smothered conversation followed by Robert chuckling amusedly, voice clear in Jude's ear once more. "That was Matthew. Chloe's waiting to beautify us, and then Guy's waiting to yell at us. He asked me to pass it along, since I told him the reason I didn't answer the first time he knocked was that I was on the phone with you."

Jude groaned, not relishing having to de-muss himself into something that looked unlike he'd just been having phone sex with his Holmes. "Did he ask why you didn't just step twenty feet out of your trailer and actually talk to me?"

"Luckily," and Jude smiled because Robert was back in Holmes' voice once more, "I do not believe our valiant assistant director possesses the necessary deductive skills to pursue that train of inquiry."

"Fuck you," he said with a smile, sitting up and tucking himself back in to Watson's trousers.

"Fuck me," Robert affected a museful tone. "Isn't that how this started in the first place?" he asked, back to his own cocky drawl.

"No, this started when you decided 'running lines' meant turning Arthur Conan Doyle into a gay porn," Jude bit off, but the line was dead and there was a knock at his trailer door instead.

Refastening and pulling up the braces, he smoothed down his shirt and hair and opened the door to see Robert, whose eyes were glittering brighter than usual in one of his effervescent genuine smiles. "The character was there," he said, reaching out to refasten Jude's collar. "I just get into his head."

"And mine," Jude added under his breath.

Robert's smile was back with an added look of restraint, as if he was holding himself back from—Jude could only hope—kissing him. "Ditto," the man whispered back, and they looked at each other for a long moment before the clamor from the set preparing for the shoot drew their attention.

Nodding brusquely, Robert took a step away from Jude as if he couldn't trust himself to walk too close on their way back to work, but Jude turned and caught his Holmes' eye mischievously. "When do we shoot that scene?" he asked.

"Next week sometime, I think. I'd have to check. Why?"

Jude stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "I think I'd like a little more help getting into Watson's character after his near-death experience. Maybe we should run that scene again . . . in the same room. Sometime before then, yeah?"

He grinned as Robert stopped mid-stride and stared at him openly; if the late night sky hadn't been so dark, Jude was sure he would have shivered from the hint of hunger he saw in piercing eyes. Robert recovered quickly, however, and they resumed walking as he added, "Certainly. Or any of the others. The less I have to bother Andrew, the better he thinks I am at this."

The last words out of Jude's mouth before they passed into the lighted gaggle of crew left Robert with an ear-to-ear pleased smirk: "Oh, I think you're pretty fucking good at this already."

**Author's Note:**

> And for your viewing pleasure, [link back to my RDJude picspam](http://crashcart9.livejournal.com/390434.html) of a few days ago.


End file.
